Rudy, abortion and the libertarians
Posted by Matt Clifford on February 12th, 2007
One of our readers suggests that Rudy Giuliani has nothing to fear from the religious right, because his social liberalism will allow him to tap into the libertarian right. I’m not sure this is true. This report suggests that Giuliani is going to have difficulties, particularly with his views on abortion. The crucial point:
Of those favoring Giuliani in the two-way match with McCain, a little over one-third say they would either rule out voting for Giuliani entirely (10%) or be less likely to support him (25%) as a result of knowing his positions on abortion and same-sex civil unions.
If Giuliani is polling well among Republicans now, it may just be that they don’t know very much about him other than his response to 9/11.
I’m not saying that libertarian-leaning voters are not an important constituency, because they are - this report suggests they may make up as much as 13% of the US electorate. But when social conservatives are an even bigger group, it’s going to be very hard for any Republican candidate to court them.
Filed under: abortion, election2008, rudyriuliani, uspolitics on February 12th, 2007
Not to mention the fact that the social conservatives have had years of practice at an extremely successful get out the vote effort, which is probably unrivalled.
I don’t think it will necessarily be an issue.
Presidential primaries are all to do with momentum and perception. If Giuliani wins big in the early states, and does as well as or better than expected there, then the campaign will be centred more on him and he can create the persona he chooses.
I don’t see who the Christian Right will support as they probably like Mormons even less than abortionists. They are not guaranteed to vote in the primary and will not play a major part if the campaign ignores them as it may well do as politics moves towards the cntre and democrats again.
Having said that, I still think McCain will win and then go on and beat MrsRodham Clinton.
An important question is who do the social conservatives support? The Republican field is looking rather bereft of an obvious Bush-like candidate behind whom the Conservative Right could mobilise its voters, but who also has a wider appeal. I don’t think Brownback, who described abortion as a holocaust (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8017004/site/newsweek/page/2/) does.
The Democratic success in November’s Congressional elections shows that appealing to social conservatism isn’t enough on its own, and if the Christian Right is split or stays at home this has to be good for the Democrats. Then again, how many of the Democratic front-runners appeal to voters much beyond the Democratic core vote? To what extent was November a protest against the handling of the Iraq war (it’s obviously not that simple, or Lieberman wouldn’t have won)? The Democrats might find it harder to cash in on that anger when their control of the Senate for two years makes them complicit.
Perhaps I’m reading this all wrong, and please do tell me what you think everyone. But I do think it looks excitingly open.
I think it looks excitingly open as well. Hence my (now rather misguided, seeing as how many people are declaring) attempts to do posts on all of the candidates…I actually think Mike Huckabee stands a possible chance with the social conservatives…apart from his saying nice things about Bill Clinton, which I don’t imagine goes down too well with them. Or there’s the chance that they’ll decide Mormons aren’t really all that weird after all and are at least religious…
Or Newt Gingrich will get in the race.
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